Pissing contest

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a pissing contest as "a competition to see who can urinate the farthest or highest" and (in extended use) as "any contest which is futile or purposeless especially ones pursued in a conspicuously aggressive manner." The OED's first citation of pissing match is from a December 1971 Washington Post story.

Urban Dictionary's crowdsourced definition describes the term as being used figuratively "to refer to a meaningless though nonetheless entertaining act in which people try to outdo one another in any way." Comments found there also describe pissing contests as literal competition "in which two or more people, usually (but not exclusively) male, urinate with the intention of producing the stream with the greatest distance." The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English separates its definition of "pissing match" (a conflict involving "unpleasantries") from "pissing contest" (a conflict with negative attacks made by both sides). For "pissing contest" it offers a different image from other reference works: "From the graphic if vulgar image of two men urinating on each other". Both phrases are said to originate in the United States.

Female contests

Havelock Ellis, in his book Studies in the Psychology of Sex, describes a female pissing contest in Belgium, in which two women each stood over a bottle with a funnel and urinated into it, the winner being the one who most nearly filled the bottle. Women can, once they have learned the right technique, urinate standing. A comic song from 17th-century Belgium is about a similar contest, aiming into a shoe, between three women seeking to impress a man.

There is also early Irish literature about female pissing contests. In the story "Aided Derbforgaill" several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow. The winner is Derbforgaill, wife of Lugaid Riab nDerg, but the other women attack her out of jealousy and mutilate her by gouging out her eyes and cutting off her nose, ears, and hair, resulting in her death. Her husband Lugaid also dies, from grief, and Cú Chulainn avenges the deaths by demolishing a house with the women inside, killing 150.

In the animal kingdom

Pissing contests are not unique to humans. Trevor Corson's The Secret Life of Lobsters describes a pissing match between lobsters:

Metaphorical phrase

Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have said of Senator Joseph McCarthy that he wouldn't "get into a pissing contest with that skunk." Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, used the same phrase in 1958 when asked why he had not responded to a statement by the French foreign minister that the French government had not been consulted about the 1958 Lebanon crisis.

The dispute between Carl Icahn and Yahoo! was described as pissing contest. A review of American novelist John Barth's work described it as "resolutely postmodern" in approach and criticised it with a statement that: "Prolonged exposure to this particular 'pissing contest' just left me wanting to tell Barth to parse off". Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window to Human Nature credits the "wordsmiths who thought up the indispensable pissing contest" and other crass phrases such as crock of shit, pussy-whipped, and horse's ass.

The Hippie Dictionary, a fringe counterculture publication, described the arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as a pissing contest in which each country developed bigger and more powerful weapons until "each super power could obliterate the other multiple times over as well along with the rest of the world" and that "the term super power did not refer to intelligence".John Bassett McCleary The hippie dictionary: a cultural encyclopedia (and phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s Edition revised Ten Speed Press, 2004 . 704 pages p. 25

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

References

1. Barber, Katherine. (2004). "pissing contest noun". Oxford University Press.
2. (1989). "pissing, n.". Oxford University Press.
3. {{Harvnb. Wissenburg. 2008
4. (1943). "Study and Investigation of the Federal Communications Commission: Hearings Before the Select Committee to Investigate the Federal Communications Commission, House of Representatives, Seventy-eighth Congress, First Session, Acting Under H. Res. 21, a Resolution Directing the Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of the Organization, Personnel, and Activities of the Federal Communications Commission with a View to Determining Whether or Not Such Commission in Its Organization, in the Selection of Personnel, and in the Conduct of Its Activities, Has Been, and is, Acting in Accordance with Law and the Public Interest".
5. Oxford English Dictionary. [https://www.oed.com/dictionary/pissing-match_n "pissing match, n."] OED Online. Oxford University Press. (accessed March 25, 2025).
6. {{Harvnb. Peckham. 2005
7. 978-0-415-25938-5, retrieved via Google Books on November 8, 2009
8. Havelock Ellis, ''Studies in the Psychology of Sex'', volume 2 (1942), p. 407
9. (4 June 2003). "A Woman's Guide on How to Pee Standing".
10. Jan Mommaert the Younger, ''Het Brabants nachtegaelken'' (Brussels, 1650).
11. "One day in winter, when it had snowed heavily, the men made pillars of snow. The women stood on the pillars, and said, ‘Let’s piss on the pillars and see whose urine penetrates farthest. The best of us to keep will be the one who can reach right down to the ground.’ None of them could manage to penetrate all the way through the pillar to the ground. They called Derbforgaill, but she wasn’t keen – she thought it was foolish. But she was persuaded, and went onto the pillar, and her urine penetrated all the way to the ground." [http://paddybrown.co.uk/?page_id=437 The Death of Derbforgaill] Ulster Cycle texts Book of Leinster (c 1160) Paddy Brown website
12. Carl Marstrander (1911), “The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill”, Ériu 5, pp. 201–218
13. (2004). "The secret life of lobsters: how fishermen and scientists are unraveling the mysteries of our favorite crustacean". [[HarperCollins]].
14. Bennett, William J.. (2007). "America: The Last Best Hope". Thomas Nelson Inc..
15. 978-0-522-84241-8, retrieved November 6, 2009
16. "The Yahoo-Icahn pissing contest. - Online Reporter - July 25, 2008 - Business & Industry®".
17. Teddy Jamieson [https://archive.today/20130131192156/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/smgpubs/access/112520421.html?dids=112520421:112520421&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Mar+30,+2002&author=Teddy+Jamieson&pub=The+Herald&desc=No+point+in+trying+to+be+something+you're+not&pqatl=google No point in trying to be something you're not] [1 Edition] March 30, 2002, p. 12 ''The Herald'' Glasgow (UK)
18. Pinker, Steven. (3 March 2019). "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature". Penguin.